Had a chat with Andy about these the other night but just wondering if anyone else has any experience with them? Only species we currently have pics for is P. fasciata (thanks TDO) which looks like this:

I,ve got three small Syncrossus in the tank with them ,S.berdmorei ! and I never see any real interaction , the tank is 8ft long by 23inch wide so there is plenty of room, there are also Botias Dario ,Almorei and Rostrata so I guess there must be some contact possibly at feeding time ?

I suspect the L.fasciatus are too quick ,due to their slim build ?

Perhaps in a 4ft tank there might be lots more contact ,hence possible squabbling ?

The fish in the photo was only small at that point, probably 7cm TL. The drawing and photos I have of P. lijangensis (Freshwater Fishes of Guangxi (2nd edition), and Coloured Illustrations of Freshwater Fishes of China Vol 1) seems to have a much shorter head/snout than this fish and P. fasciata, and the body bands on lijangensis seem wider and don’t appear to narrow near the ventral region (they also break up a little inbetween the bands near the ventral region (like robusta)). I think it is just a young fasciata but would like to see it now it is adult. Looking at the photo and drawing of lijangensis, this fish is not lijangensis IMO.

It seems to match the image of an adult P. fasciata pictured in Freshwater Fishes of Guangxi (2nd edition). Because it came in with S. robusta, doesn’t mean it was caught with that species but I can see why you doubt it, though the Yangtze spans a massive region of China.

Ive been having a rumage around this morning and I think the fish in the photo that TDO put up could possibly be either Parabotia banarescui or More likely Parabotia lijiangensis, I have one photo of the P. lijiangensis and it matches aprt from the head shape but the fish is clearly frshly dead and from the marks it looks like it was hit in the head

Yes Matt, I noticed that Steve did mention the head shape, and for me that was something that stood out but that fish in the photo in “Freshwater fishes of China” has for me definately something wrong about its head.

Hmm its one of those tricky ones isnt it, I want to include it in the book as it has made it into the country all be it as a contaminent I am just not 100% about whether to label it as faciata or just Parabotia Sp or even Parabotia cf fasciata for now

The drawings I have of lijangensis also have the strange head shape. I think the lijangensis in the CIFFC book is as it should be.

As I said, the pic in Freshwater Fishes of Guangxi (2nd edition) captioned as fasciata does match the specimen in my photo (albeit an adult and with more faded greener markings, but still has thick body bands, unlike the photo in CIFFC and in Stan’s photo).

banarescui and fasciata are similar. The only differences I can find is that in fasciata the dorsal has iii9-10 in banarescui iv9these are guesses on Chinese translations for fins: fasciata ventral i7, banarescui i6

I cant count the ventral fin rays on the fish in my photo but it appears to have iii10, so this would make it fasciata, albeit this I cannot guarantee of course.